{"id":5890,"date":"2009-11-13T18:06:49","date_gmt":"2009-11-13T22:06:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=5890"},"modified":"2010-05-12T12:02:29","modified_gmt":"2010-05-12T17:02:29","slug":"experienced-pointsits-the-end-of-the-war-as-we-know-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=5890","title":{"rendered":"Experienced Points:<br>It&#8217;s the End of the War as we Know it"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This week&#8217;s Experienced Points is a list of all the reasons that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.escapistmagazine.com\/articles\/view\/columns\/experienced-points\/6768-Its-the-End-of-the-War-as-We-Know-It\">peer-to-peer multiplayer with strangers is a terrible replacement for dedicated servers<\/a>.  I had to really chop this list down to make it fit, because the changes are so fundamental. <\/p>\n<p>Infinity Ward has been promising that peer-to-peer gaming will be <em>even better<\/em> than gaming on a dedicated server.  They even went so far as to suggest that this move would <em>help<\/em> in the fight against cheaters, while anyone who understands the nature of the problem will see that this will change the battle from &#8220;challenging&#8221; to &#8220;insurmountable&#8221;. <\/p>\n<p>I listed &#8220;cheats&#8221; as my #1 concern in the article.  I wrote that on Tuesday. On Wednesday &#8211; launch day &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.escapistmagazine.com\/news\/view\/96056-Modern-Warfare-2-Seemingly-Hacked-One-Day-Post-Launch\">cheats had already come out<\/a>. This video shows off a cheater doing his cheating business.<\/p>\n<p><table class='nomargin' cellspacing='0' width='100%' cellpadding='0' align='center' border='0'><tr><td><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_37pYlEc74s\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen class=\"embed\"><\/iframe><br\/><small><a href='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=_37pYlEc74s'>Link (YouTube)<\/a><\/small><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n<p>Note that this is even worse than I predicted. This is a client-side cheater. Still worse, is that according to people that have the game you can&#8217;t even kick the cheaters.<\/p>\n<p>Here is what I think is going on with this cheater:<\/p>\n<p>It looks like his client is hacked so that it will display a red box over all foes, even ones hidden behind cover.  This means the cheater can see all foes, all the time.  Given his endless stream of headshots, I suspect it&#8217;s also acting as an aimbot.  When he pulls the trigger, his client calculates the perfect firing solution and makes adjustments to his aim. He probably just needs to get his crosshairs inside of the red rectangle and the software does the rest.<\/p>\n<p>What really makes me sad: <\/p>\n<p>Day one sales of Modern Warfare 2 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.escapistmagazine.com\/news\/view\/96054-Did-Modern-Warfare-2-Sell-7-Million-Copies-in-One-Day\">shattered all kinds of sales records<\/a>.  This makes it pretty clear to both sides just how irrelevant PC users are.  The gutting of PC multiplayer and the subsequent boycott didn&#8217;t even leave a scratch. <\/p>\n<p>(Hearsay from a friend who works at Gamestop: on launch day they sold over 1,000 copies of the game. Of those, only <strong>two<\/strong> were for the PC.)<\/p>\n<p>And of course, this is also part of the problem:<\/p>\n<p><table width='600'  cellpadding='0' cellspacing='0' border='0' align='center'><tr><td><a href='http:\/\/www.rockpapershotgun.com\/2009\/11\/12\/why-they-dont-take-boycotts-seriously\/'><img src='https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/images\/mw2_boycott.jpg' class='insetimage' width='600' alt='mw2_boycott.jpg' title='mw2_boycott.jpg'\/><\/a><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s the member list for the Steam group dedicated to boycotting the game. Smashing. Really. Golf clap for everyone involved. Fans. Developers. Publishers. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week&#8217;s Experienced Points is a list of all the reasons that peer-to-peer multiplayer with strangers is a terrible replacement for dedicated servers. I had to really chop this list down to make it fit, because the changes are so fundamental. Infinity Ward has been promising that peer-to-peer gaming will be even better than gaming [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weekly-column"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5890\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}